Different And The Same
by Gerri
Summary: A story revolving around Ben and Alec's relationship as twins narrated mainly by Alec.
1. Fork In The Road

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A/N: I haven't watched Season 2 yet, so I don't know much about Alec's character; all that I DO know about his character comes from reading the transcripts of "Designate This" and "The Berrisford Agenda". I just had to write this after thinking about Ben and Alec's relationship as twins, something not all of the X5 kids had, and I hope that you won't hate me for writing something that I don't completely understand yet. This is only my first DA fic; I'm just giving this a shot, so please be gentle when reviewing.

Disclaimer: I own nothing from Dark Angel. Unfortunately.

Different And The Same

Chapter 1: Fork In The Road

I think I remember him.

X5-493.

The two of us were just one of nature's surprises: twins. Two of a kind. Natural clones.

Sometimes I wonder if I'm a clone of 493 or if he's a clone of me.

Maybe he's a clone of me. 'Cause if I were a clone of him, I'd have got his whacked genes.

What does it feel like to have a brother?

I don't know.

The last time I saw 493 was when we were two years old. I remember that.

When we turned three, two men came into our dormitory. One woke me up.

I looked directly across the room; 493's cot was opposite mine, and a man had woken him up too.

He looked confused. I must've looked the same.

We always looked the same.

They led both of us out of the dormitory, holding our wrists.

I remember their shoes making soft squeaking noises on the floor.

493's and my feet didn't make any noise. We didn't have shoes.

We were wearing the grey gowns that all of us were given. The men wore black jumpsuits.

When we stepped out of the dormitory, the man holding 493's wrist turned left. The man with me turned right.

I turned to the man beside me as we walked.

"Where's 493 going?" I asked.

"He's going to be a soldier," the man answered. I noticed that he didn't look at me when he answered.

I was getting tired. The man walked fast, and I had to take three steps to match his one stride.

"But we do everything together," I told him. "If 493's going to be a soldier, then where am I going?"

"You're going to be one too, don't worry. Just not with 493. If you keep relying on each other, your dependence may prove to be a weakness. Do you understand, 494?"

I didn't understand, but I said 'yes' anyway.

"From now on, you don't say 'yes.' You say 'yes, _sir_.'"

"Yes, sir."

We walked for a long time. I didn't know that my home was this big.

I wondered if 493 was taking a long walk too.

The ladies in the nursery, the ones who taught us how to talk and walk, said that 493 and I always did the same things.

When we were two years old, we realised that we were different from the other children.

None of them looked the same, like 493 and I did.

None of them could feel how other people felt, not like how 493 and I could feel each other.

We liked being different.

We liked being able to know how the other felt without using our mouths to say anything. It was a nice game to see if I could guess how 493 was feeling.

493 would smile at me and tell me that this was our secret.

The ladies told us that a secret was something that you didn't tell anyone else.

Having a secret was fun.

Suddenly, the man stopped. I stopped too, and he knocked on the door in front of us.

Someone opened it on the other side and looked at the man. Then he looked down at me, and at the man again.

"X5-494," the man told him.

The two of them talked for a while, but I wasn't listening.

I saw children inside the room.

There were a row of beds on either side of the door, and there were children standing in front of the beds.

"494." I looked up. The other man was also wearing a black jumpsuit. "Come in."

The man let go of me, and I walked into the room. The other man closed the door.

"Over there." He pointed at a bed in the middle of the left row of beds.

I went and stood in front of it. There was a big metal box with "X5-494" on it. Mine.

We waited. Another man came in.

He wore heavy black boots that knocked on the floor as he walked up and down the aisle between the two rows of beds. He looked at each one of us, staring at our faces. Some of the others looked down, away from his eyes. His clothes were a funny colour, like they couldn't decide if they wanted to be green or black; there were green and black patches all over his clothes.

He went back to stand at the front of the room again after staring at all of us.

"Listen up!" he shouted.

I got scared. I put my hands over my ears. All the others did too. No one had ever talked so loudly to me before.

"Take your hands off your ears! Stand up straight! This is only the beginning! From now on, you are all soldiers! Everyone look around you and remember these faces; they will be your team, your teammates, for a long time to come. You! What's your designation?!" he yelled at the child nearest to him on his left.

"D-designation?" the child asked.

He was scared. Like me. Like everyone else.

I was scared. Where was 493?

"What does everyone call you?!" the fierce man shouted, stepping nearer to the child.

"X5-386."

"Louder!"

He was scaring all of us. Where was 493??

"X5-386." He was a bit louder now.

"I still can't hear you!"

"X5-386!"

"You!" the fierce man pointed at the next child.

"X5-398!"

"You!" to the next in line.

"X5-563!"

"X5-529!"

"X5-839!"

"X5-621!"

"X5-494!"

The fierce man would stand in front of us we shouted our num-…our designations. Then he'd move to the next person. He stopped in front of me when I said mine, but he didn't move on. He waved his hand and the man who had opened the door walked over.

"Yes, sir?" he asked the fierce man.

"This is 494?" the fierce man asked. His voice wasn't so loud now. I didn't understand; if he could talk in a softer voice, then why did he shout at us?

"Yes, sir."

"Where's the other one?"

"Other one, sir?"

The other man didn't know what the fierce man was talking about, but I did. The 'other one' was 493. It had to be.

"Where's 493?" I asked.

The fierce man stared at me.

"You. Will. Keep. Quiet," his voice was soft, but it sounded angry. "Unless you are _spoken to_!!" he shouted.

And I felt something hit my face.

I fell, and all the children on my left shrank away from me when I hit the floor.

The side of my face hurt. He hit me. It hurt. I started crying.

"Stop crying! You do not cry! Crying is a sign of weakness! Emotion is weakness! Get to your feet, 494!"

I got up quickly and wiped my face on my sleeve. I didn't want to get hit again.

"All of you, do you understand what I just said?"

They all mumbled "yes", but I remembered what the man who had brought me here had told me.

So instead, I said 'yes, sir'.

The fierce man stared at me again.

"Fast learner, aren't you, 494?"

I didn't know how to answer that question.

"Soldiers, we have an example of good conduct here: you will learn from 494; when talking to an officer, you will begin and end every sentence with 'sir'. Is that understood?"

"Sir, yes, sir."

"Louder!"

"Sir, yes, _sir_!!"

I didn't know it then, but now, looking back, that was kinda symbolic. With that "Sir, yes, sir!!" we sealed our fates.

We became soldiers then. We were condemned to be soldiers for the rest of our lives, at an age when we didn't even understand what a soldier was.

I had twenty-four teammates. Fellow soldiers.

We all attended classes together.

Language classes.

Hand-to-hand combat.

Armed combat.

Field med.

Self-defence.

Stealth and reconnaissance.

We learned to assemble and disassemble weapons. We learned to name every type of weapon that existed and list its capabilities and disadvantages. We learned to use any weapon that the officers threw at us: crossbows, daggers, pistols, rifles, hand grenades, smoke bombs, and tear gas.

When we were all five years old, some of us would shake in our sleep. At first, they were only small shakes. We didn't pay attention to them.

Then, 451 shook really badly in her sleep. The officers came and took her away.

Later, 398 and 529 frequently lost complete motor control.

They were taken away too.

Twenty-two of us left, including me.

They started making us sit in classes where we had to listen to officers and had to sit very still. The officers would flash words at us on a big screen, and they would repeat some things over and over again.

There was one class that we had quite often.

_DISCIPLINE _

"A soldier has discipline!"

DUTY 

"The discipline to carry out his duty!"

MISSION 

"A soldier's duty is his mission!"

DISCIPLINE DUTY MISSION 

"Discipline is required to accomplish the objective of the mission!"

"Failure is not acceptable!"

"Failure means punishment!"

"Failure **deserves** punishment!"

We turned eight. 551 began intentionally injuring some of us during combat classes. Officers took her away, and 731 too when he started doing the same thing. The officers said that it was psychosis. I didn't know what psychosis was, but it didn't sound good.

It couldn't be good if they took you away and you never came back.

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"They give you to the Nomlies."

The thought just appeared in my head.

But the voice…I knew that voice.

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493!

I'd forgotten all about 493…now I understood. They gave us these comrades, these teammates, so that we'd forget each other.

493 had a word for the ones that didn't come back…Nomlies.

The twenty of us left, turned nine. I was made CO.

That year, it happened.

One night in winter, an alarm woke all of us. We all sat straight up in our beds. We watched the door, but no one came. That meant that we weren't being mobilised. 

"What's happening?" 621 asked me.

I shook my head.

"I don't know."

I got out of bed and looked out the window. I saw soldiers, dressed in black and carrying rifles, running through the snow.

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'An escape,' I thought.

Why was that the first thing that I thought of?

My heart started beating fast. Like I was afraid of something.

Afraid of what? Why did I feel this way?

Then I remembered how 493 and I could 'feel' each other when we were younger.

Where was 493?

Strange to think that the last time I'd asked that question was six years ago.

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'Where's 493…?' I wondered as I looked out at the snow and the searchlights.

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'494…?'

'Where are you?' I asked, even though I was surprised that he'd heard me thinking.

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'I'm leaving, 494. Escaping. Our CO says that we have to do it.'

'You can't leave me here, 493!'

'My orders are different from yours, 494. And I'm not 493 anymore. I'm Ben now.'

It was the first time that I'd ever talked to 493 that way. Without using our mouths.

The next day, we had a different kind of class.

They showed us pictures.

Pictures of the ones who ran away.

Their faces kept flashing on a big screen in front of us while an officer told us their designations.

"X5-599!"

Their CO. The word "TRAITOR" appeared on the screen.

"X5-656!"

The word "TRAITOR" again.

"X5-734!"

Traitor.

"X5-452!"

Traitor.

The screen flashed again. Another picture.

When the picture appeared, three of my teammates who were sitting closest to me suddenly rushed at me and pinned me to the floor.

"Get off me!!" I ordered.

"Traitor!" they shouted back. "_Traitor!!_" the rest of the class shouted along with them.

Some officers pulled them away. They put us all back in our seats.

"Soldiers, this is not 494!" the training officer pointed at the picture on the screen. "He may _look_ like your CO, but this is not X5-494! This is X5-493!"

"_Traitor!!_" all my teammates shouted.

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'Traitor,' I thought. _'493 is a traitor. You're a traitor, 493. You're a traitor for running away. You're a traitor for leaving me alone here.'_


	2. Parallel Paths

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A/N: I expected that some of you wouldn't like the telepathy thing, but that's why it only happens once in this story. :) Thank you for all your reviews, by the way. :)

Note to inlovewithchris: Sorry, I **did not** mix up Ben and Alec's designations at the end of Chapter 1; the officer was referring to the Ben's picture on the screen, not Alec. You probably thought of it the other way round.

Different And The Same

Chapter 2: Parallel Paths

The year that we turned 12, they introduced a new class. Common Verbal Usage.

The next year, when we were 13, we found a use for that class.

Solo missions.

"X5-494!"

"Present, sir!"

"Proceed to Briefing Room 3 for your mission brief."

"Yes, sir."

I walked out of our barracks; the officers had moved us to this barracks when we were 11. It didn't look any different from our earlier barracks, though. It was still all grey, with a row of beds on either side of the door, and three "Mission", "Duty", and "Discipline" placards on each wall. Possibly the only difference was that the beds were larger.

And we didn't wear those grey gowns anymore. Now we wore grey shirts, long pants with patches of white grey and black, and black boots, like the officers' boots, only ours were smaller.

I knocked on the door of Briefing Room 3.

When I was told to, I entered, and automatically saluted the officer sitting behind the desk in the small, windowless room.

"At ease, soldier."

I stood with my feet apart, and he spoke again.

"Your first solo mission?"

"Yes, sir."

He cleared his throat appreciatively.

"All right then, listen. The target is a businessman named David Andrews." He showed me a picture. "However, your primary objective lies with his son," he held up another picture, "James Andrews. You have to gain the boy's trust first, to prevent suspicion on the older Andrews' part. This will then lead to the secondary objective. Termination of the target. Simple enough?"

"Yes, sir."

"Good. This is his address," he pushed a slip of paper towards me, "and this is a picture of the apartment complex." I quickly committed the picture of the tall building to memory. 

"You will be posing as the son of a couple who have just moved in, on Andrews' floor. In the event of any need, two officers will be standing by in 'your family's' apartment to act as your parents. Your alias is Marcus Owen. There is a van on the ground floor which will take you to the sector that the apartment complex is located in. From there, locate the building, and first report to the two officers posing as your parents in apartment number 20-14. From there, your mission commences. Every night, you will return to Manticore to report. Is that understood?"

"Yes, sir."

"Proceed back to your barracks; you'll be given a change of clothes there. After that, make your way downstairs."

"Yes, sir." I saluted and left.

When I got back to the barracks, it was empty. I guessed that my teammates must have gone for their own individual mission briefings.

The new clothes that I was given…they were strange colours.

The shirt was…the only place where I'd seen that colour was in blood. The shirt was the colour of blood. That colour that was so dark that it was almost black. And the trousers were like the colour of the sky, but much darker. I was given new footwear too. These were smaller than my boots, and they didn't make as much noise. They were grey. That made me feel more comfortable. I knew the colour grey. I was familiar with it.

When I got into the black van downstairs, one of the officers thrust a map of the specific sector into my hands. I located the building on the map and memorised the fastest route there from the sector checkpoint where I would be dropped off.

The van drove off, leaving me alone, just inside the sector gate.

I stood there, not quite…understanding what I was seeing.

There were so many colours. Colours that I'd never seen before. The sky looked so much bigger than I remembered it. The air smelled, tasted different.

It looked so different from Manticore.

Then again, of course it did.

This was the world Outside. Filth and degradation.

Manticore was pure. Manticore was better.

Wrinkling my nose in disgust, I started on the route that I'd planned.

There were all kinds of…clutter on the street. Sometimes, I couldn't even see the ground.

Manticore's floors were never dirty.

The world Outside was one of complete disorder. There didn't seem to be any routine that people followed; no common objective in mind; they were just milling around, talking a lot, going their own different ways. There was only one thing about these people that held my attention.

Their hair.

Manticore had only stopped giving us monthly haircuts just last year. Before that, our hair had always been closely shaved. Now, the females were allowed to keep their hair up to shoulder-length. The males still kept it short, but not as short as before.

I reached a hand up to touch my hair as I walked.

My hair was dark brown and I had to keep it neat; it seemed to get messy very easily. 621's hair was very different from mine. His hair was light instead of dark; it was the same colour as the sun. It was straight, but very often got in his face if he ran. But he would usually just push it out of his face, and it didn't get as messy as mine did.

I stood in front of the apartment complex. I looked up, examining it. It matched the picture that the officer had shown me.

I went in and reported to the two officers. They said that they'd inform Manticore that I had arrived.

Then I proceeded further down the corridor.

The walls were all different light and dark browns…I knew the colour brown. I'd seen it on trees. And the lights were like 621's hair, the colour of the sun. And they were small, sitting on long white sticks that were mounted on the walls. Not like the big, long, white tubes of light on the ceiling in Manticore.

I came to apartment number 20-21.

I knocked, and a man opened the door.

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'The target is a businessman named David Andrews.'

And this man matched the picture that I'd been shown.

He was the target.

"Can I help you?" he asked, looking down at me.

I smiled.

"I just moved in, actually," I told him. "My parents are busy, so I'm just wandering around. I'm Marcus Owen." I held out my hand.

"It's nice to meet you, Marcus," he smiled back as he shook my hand, then winced at a loud noise coming from inside the apartment. "James! The study's out of bounds!" he turned to shout. He turned back to me. "Just my son," he explained.

"Your son?" I remembered my primary objective. I tried to see past him. "Is he my age?"

"He's going on twelve. Do you want to come in? It'd be better than standing out there," he chuckled.

"If you say so," I stepped into the house as he closed the door behind me.

His apartment was very bright. Large, glass windows, facing another, shorter, apartment complex. I could see its roof from his apartment.

"James! Someone for you to meet!" he called.

A boy ran into the room.

The primary contact.

"Never seen you around before," he said as he looked at me.

"That's 'cause I just moved in," I smiled. I was starting to get the hang of smiling. "I'm Marcus."

"James," he replied.

"Well," the older Andrews began, "if you'll excuse me, I have to get back to my work now." And he left us.

"Dad's always busy," James told me. "Come on, now that you're here, maybe you could keep me company."

He led me into the living room.

"How old are you?"

"Thirteen."

"You're a year older'n me. Here." He handed me a control pad. And we spent the next two hours, playing what he called a video game.

"Boy, you're good at this," he said when we'd finished. "You've really never played this before?"

"Never. But the situations given in this simulation are unrealistic. And real gunfire does not sound like that."

"You're really into this military stuff, huh?"

"You could say that."

"So, what does your dad do?"

"My parents are teachers."

"Both?"

I nodded.

"Mum left Dad years ago. I don't see her much. I don't even know what she works as."

"Marcus!" his father poked his head into the living room. "Do you want to stay for dinner?"

"Sure."

It went on like that for five days. When James got back from school, I'd already be in the apartment waiting for him. His father would let me in. He worked from home.

James and I would talk, play his video games, watch TV, or do whatever caught his interest that afternoon.

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"Primary objective has been accomplished, sir."

"You're certain of that, 494?"

"Positive, sir. I am allowed free run of the Andrews' apartment without raising suspicion. Permission to begin secondary objective, sir?"

"Permission granted, 494."

It had been six days since I first walked into the Andrews' apartment.

I was carrying a bag that day.

In the bag were the weapons that I'd requested to complete my mission.

An unloaded crossbow. An arrow for the crossbow. About ten feet of cable. A pistol. I hadn't requested a silencer for the gun. I wanted it to make noise.

The officers had approved of my planning for the final stage of the mission.

There were neighbours who knew that I came to the apartment everyday and didn't leave until very late, so I might become a prime suspect if I left the apartment after killing them. So that left me with another alternative. To cover my tracks.

"Hey, Marcus." James was motioning me into his father's study. "Look what I found. One of Dad's old books about the meanings of names."

I feigned interest.

" 'Marcus' means 'Of Mars, god of war'," he read from the book. "And 'Owen' means 'young warrior'." He looked up at me. "No wonder you're so into this war stuff; both your first and last names have stuff about war in them."

"I didn't know."

Maybe Manticore had specially picked those two names for me. Maybe they'd just thought it up, pulled it out of thin air. Whichever it was, I'll never know.

I waited for night to fall. After dinner, I went into Andrews' study.

He looked up.

"Didn't hear you coming. Where's James?"

"In the bathroom, sir."

"I see. You're leaving now?" I usually left after dinner, you see.

"Not really." I casually pulled out the gun from behind my back and hefted it in my gloved right hand. I knew that he wouldn't suspect anything.

"Nice toy," he said. "Looks pretty lifelike."

By this time, I'd learned that my age was an asset. The target didn't suspect that I was capable of extreme violence because he thought I was young.

"It's much more lifelike than you think, sir." Then from where I was standing, I aimed at his forehead, and the sound of a gunshot rang through the apartment.

I heard the sound of running feet. James burst into the study behind me, as I lowered the gun.

"What was that?!" he asked.

I knew that he was referring to the sound of gunfire.

I turned to face him, carefully keeping the gun concealed.

"James, do you want to know what real gunfire sounds like?"

I raised the gun and fired, all in one motion. A neat, round hole appeared in his forehead.

I don't think he had the chance to hear that gunshot.

I tossed the gun onto the floor and moved over to the glass windows. The gunshots would have been heard, just like I wanted them to be.

Standing in front of the large glass windows, I drew back my arm and smashed one, clearing a man-sized hole in it.

I took out the crossbow, attached one end of the cable to the arrow, loaded the crossbow, and fired. It hit the roof of the short, neighbouring apartment building, and snagged onto something.

I wound the other end of the cable around one of the pillars in the living room, making sure that the cable was taut. I left the crossbow on the floor, next to the shattered window.

I heard people in the corridor. Just like I'd planned.

I picked up my bag and squeezed myself into a corner of the living room, where I was easily hidden by Andrews' TV and stereo system.

I sat there, listening to the voices.

The door crashed open.

"I heard gunshots, and then-Oh my God!" a woman's voice.

"Ma'am, step outside, please." A male voice.

Footsteps approached my location.

"Hey, Tom! There's someone here!"

The stereo system was pushed aside.

"It's a kid. Hey…are you okay? Do you know what happened here?"

"Don't think he knows anything, Tom. Probably hid there when the killer came in and wasn't seen by the psycho. Looks like he's traumatised."

"Tom" looked around the apartment.

Escaped through there, I guess." He nodded at the window that I'd smashed.

"Yeah. Come on, hand him to me. We've got an ambulance waiting downstairs."

He carried me downstairs, put me in the ambulance, and when the ambulance started moving, I sat up on the stretcher.

"Report, 494," one of the "medics" said.

"Mission accomplished, sir."

"Well done," he smiled at me. "Your mission planning was…well, to put it simply, creative, I must say."

"Thank you, sir," I smiled back.

Up till the year that I turned 16, I remained CO of my group of X5s. I lost three teammates to the seizures, and two to psychosis, before I became CO. After I became CO, I lost another five to incompetence. Those five had either failed their solo missions or were too careless or over-confident in field exercises.

Anyway, they separated us when we were 16, saying that we were old enough to be independent.

We were moved to individual quarters; needless to say, they were much smaller than the barracks than I'd grown up sleeping in.

By the time we were separated, 621 and I were in the lead of our group of X5s; we had completed the most solo missions.

Around this time, I also began having doubts about the world Outside.

From what I'd seen, it may have been mostly filth, but most people tried to keep their living quarters clean. And I remembered a word that I'd first heard on my third solo mission, when I was 15.

The target's wife had held her daughter close for a brief second when she was leaving for school, and said, "I love you", which the daughter then repeated back to her.

This was an action that I didn't understand, since it didn't seem to have any obvious purpose, but what confused me even more were the words that the target's wife spoke.

On the night of my first day on that mission, I'd lain awake in my bed at Manticore.

"Why aren't you asleep?" 621 had asked me from his bed next to mine.

"I was," I'd lied. "You woke me up."

"You were not. Your breathing patterns were at normal speed, not the slower speed that they'd be if you were asleep."

Silence.

"621, do you remember a word called 'love' from Common Verbal Usage?"

"No. But I've heard it before."

"On solo missions?"

"Yes."

"No one says it in Manticore."

"No."

"Why?"

"We're soldiers. We're not in positions to discuss the merits of our superiors' behavioural patterns."

"I'm starting to wonder, 621. Is the world Outside really as bad as the officers make it out to be?"

"Watch your mouth, 494. You'll get solitary for asking questions like that."

621 was right, I knew that. So I didn't ask the officer who taught Common Verbal Usage, the meaning of the word 'love'.

Maybe I should have.

If I had, maybe he would have warned me that 'love' was a weakness. But then again, if he'd told me that, I would never have learnt for myself that it was also a strength.

One person taught me all that, and she never used any words to explain it.

Of all people, it had to be my primary contact on a mission.

Of all people, it had to be Rachel Berrisford.

I was 18 on that mission. When it ended, they had me re-educated. 'Brainwashed' is the common word, I guess.

I had it drilled into my head, all over again, that the world Outside was filth and degradation, and that I was a superior being, a perfect soldier, created by Manticore. I never wondered about the world Outside anymore after that.

I spent two months in re-indoctrination.

Then I walked into an Advanced Combat class one day, and was paired off with a familiar face.

X5-621.

"The world Outside softened you, 494?" he sneered at me as we circled.

"Shut up, 621."

"You're not the CO that I had for seven years, 494. We were the best team within our group when we were still together. Because you and I were the best, 494. But not anymore. You've forgotten what you are. You belong in the world Outside. You're filth."

"Shut up-"

I threw a punch at him, but my right leg suddenly gave out under me. I tried and found that I couldn't stand on it.

I didn't understand what was going on.

I noticed 621 smirking.

I wanted to get up and whack the smirk off his face.

But I couldn't and I didn't know why.

I thought that was bad. Until the stabbing pain in my neck came.

That hurt so badly that I started shaking.

Then I realised what was happening.

I was shaking. I'd had seizures before, all of us did, but most of us had them in the night when the officers weren't around to take us away.

But now I was having a seizure in plain view of _everyone_!

621 knelt down beside me.

"I told you, 494. You belong in the world Outside. You're weak. You're inferior."

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NO!!

I'd lost three teammates to the seizures before I was CO; I didn't want them to take me away!

And then I heard it. A voice…that sounded like an echo.

__

'Don't let them take me…'

"Don't let them take me," I repeated after it.

"Bye, 494," 621 replied. He looked past me. "They're coming to take you," he smirked.

This couldn't be happening. I'd always been a good soldier!

__

'Only the best soldiers get to go to the Good Place.'

I felt strong arms lift me off the floor and drag me away.

__

'Where no one gets punished.'

I saw the ceiling lights of Manticore.

__

'Where no one yells at you.'

I saw the door to the infirmary.

__

'And no one disappears.'

My eyes snapped open. It was strange, because I didn't remember closing them.

"You're awake," someone observed. My head whipped around to the side.

It was one of the doctors.

"What happened?" I asked.

"The nerves in your leg were sending pain impulses to your brain; we're not sure why, though, and there was a muscular spasm in your neck. But you're fine. You can get back to your quarters now."

She walked away.

I sat up slowly, not quite trusting my legs to hold me up if I stepped off the bed.

As I was wondering whether or not to get off the bed, I heard the infirmary door open.

"Is 494 still here?" a male voice asked.

"He's about to leave, actually, to go back to his _quarters_. He's perfectly healthy." The female doctor's voice.

"How do you define 'healthy' when the subject in question is a transgenic freak, anyway?" a second voice, also male. It sounded like one of the guards around the place.

"That's for _me_ to know," the doctor snapped. "I'm just telling you that he's not going to the lab. He's _fine_."

"We've got our orders. He's coming with us, whether he's fine or not." The first voice again.

There was a frustrated sigh from the doctor.

"494?" she called. "Are you still there?"

I stepped out from behind the screen, pulling my grey shirt on.

There were two soldiers standing in the doorway. The doctor was standing in front of them, watching me as I approached, with a strange expression on her face.

She looked…apologetic.

Her hand squeezed my shoulder.

"There's nothing wrong with you, 494. You'll be okay."

I turned to look at her, confused.

"Come on, 494. You're coming with us," the first soldier said.

They walked on both sides of me, escorting me through the maze of corridors. Soon, we were walking through a part of Manticore that I'd never seen before. We came to a stop outside a door that was labelled "Psych. Department".

When we walked in, I saw a man standing just inside the room, leaning against a desk. I recognised him as an officer; I'd seen him at a few training sessions before.

"Sir," he looked up at me when I spoke, "permission to speak freely, sir."

"Go ahead," he nodded.

"Sir, may I know what's going on, sir?"

He sighed.

"Do you remember 493, 494?"

"I…Yes, sir."

"493 was terminated about an hour ago. Before he was terminated, we found evidence that he was…an anomaly. He was…unstable. Since both of you are twins, you're here for psychological observation to make sure that you don't have the same problem that he did."

"Sir, the medical officer mentioned that there was nothing wrong with me, sir."

"Not physically." He sighed again. "Not physically, of course. How could you have any physical defects? You're the most perfect X-series that I've ever created all these years…" he mumbled.

"Sir?"

"Nothing, soldier. Just a bit of mindless rambling."

He left. Then the scientists started their tests.

When I was back in my quarters that night, I was exhausted. Mentally exhausted.

Before then, I'd never known that there were different kinds of exhaustion.

__

"What're the numbers on this card, 494?" The scientist flashed the card at me quickly before concealing it.

"8-9-5-1-5-3-2-6-0-4-7-5-8-3-6-0-0-9-2."

"How many dots are there, 494?" A mosaic of black dots of various sizes winked on the screen and then quickly winked off again.

"392."

Before I fell asleep, I heard the voice again.

__

'And when you wake up in the morning, you can stay in bed as long as you want.'

I'd never heard this voice before, but I could tell that it vaguely matched a voice that I'd last heard when I was nine years old.

493.

I knew what 493 was talking about. In that Advanced Combat class, his voice had also mentioned a Good Place that he seemed to know of. It didn't sound like he was talking to me, though. It sounded more like this had been recorded and was now being played back in my head.

__

'You can stay in bed as long as you want.'

Really, 493? Is the Good Place like that?

Is that your Good Place?

If I had a Good Place, mine would be different.

In my Good Place, you would be allowed to love people.

I understand what love is, 493.

Did you understand it, 493?

__

'I'm not 493 anymore. I'm Ben now.'

It doesn't matter what you're called. I loved you, I did.

But now you've left me alone again.

Have you ever loved me, 493?


	3. When The Road Merges

__

A/N: This chapter has parts where Max narrates instead of Alec; please don't get confused when that happens.

Different And The Same

Chapter 3: When The Road Merges

It was that time of the month again.

All right, don't get me wrong; I know what that phrase means in the world Outside.

"Report, X5-494!"

"Present, sir!"

What I mean is that it's that time of the month when the officers assign you a breeding partner.

"X5-452."

__

' "X5-452!"

Traitor.'

"Sir, permission to speak freely, sir."

The officer looked up from his clipboard and raised an eyebrow at me.

"You have a problem with your breeding partner _already_, 494?"

"No, sir. It's just that…isn't X5-452 one of the twelve that escaped in '09?"

"Right you are. Is that a problem?"

__

'Actually, yes, sir. You see, she spent ten years in the world Outside; I could catch something from just being in the same room as her. I don't want to be anywhere near her. She's inferior.'

"No, sir."

"Good. Report, X5-224!" he moved onto the next soldier.

Oh, I get it.

I'm inferior, so I get the inferior goods too, is that it?

Heck, whatever.

One of the guards opened the cell door and I caught a first glimpse of her. So this was one of the notorious twelve.

I knew that X5-599, X5-656 and X5-734 had been recaptured, but I'd never had the chance to see them. Right then, X5-452 was the only one of the escapees that I'd met, and-

"Ben?" she suddenly said.

"What?" I asked.

"You look like someone that I used to know."

There was sadness in her voice. A sadness that I'd heard somewhere before.

Wait a minute. _"Ben"?_

'I'm not 493 anymore. I'm Ben now.'

"My designation's 494."

"His was 493. You must be twins."

Yeah, we are. Oh sorry, I mean, "were". We _were_ twins.

493's dead.

He died, got himself out of his own personal hell, and got me _into_ hell, all at the same time.

Go ahead; spend half a year in Psy. Obs. When you get out of it, you'll find that even describing it as "hell" is too mild.

But then again, we still _are_ twins, aren't we? Even if he's dead, he _is_ still my brother, isn't he?

"What the hell was that?!" I yelled at her.

"The only kind of physical contact that we'll be having," she snapped, explaining the kick to my stomach.

Fine. I could live with that.

That same night, in my quarters, I didn't know why, but I found myself lying awake, trying to place where I'd heard that kind of sadness before.

The sadness sounded familiar…

__

'I'm leaving, 494. Escaping. Our CO says we have to do it.'

There. In that last sentence.

__

'Our CO says we have to do it.'

When I was nine, that was all that I heard.

Strangely enough, ten years later, in that same sentence, I could hear another meaning somewhere behind 493's last words to me.

I still heard, _'Our CO says we have to do it.'_

But now, I also heard, _'I don't mean to, but I have to. I'm sorry. Please understand.'_

Well, now that I did understand, it was kinda late for that, wasn't it?

493 was already dead.

Not that it was any fault of mine.

We'd been warned that the world Outside wasn't any paradise. It was his fault; he was stupid enough to blindly follow his damned CO's orders.

Well, look where it got you, 493.

It got you to a place where I wish _I_ could be, that's where.

__

'And when you wake up in the morning, you can stay in bed as long as you want.'

Are you in your Good Place, 493?

You can sleep for as long as you want now, can't you, 493?

But you left me behind; _I_ still have to wake up every morning once the lights come on, _I_ still have to have people yell at me, and jump to attention and stop breathing if an officer so much as looks at me.

You left me behind.

It's what you've done all your life.

You've always left me behind.

***

I don't know what I'm feeling right now.

I'm watching Manticore being razed to the ground, and I'm not sure of what I'm feeling.

Is this what it felt like for you, 493?

Were you scared of the world Outside, but happy that you were leaving Manticore, at the same time?

Why did you leave?

Had your CO seen something that convinced him that Manticore wasn't all as good as the officers made it out to be?

What made the twelve of you leave the only home, the only world, that you'd ever known and throw yourselves into the world Outside?

Into a world that would see you as freaks, simply for the fact that you were made, and not conceived?

Did you feel that you were free, right away?

I don't.

I don't feel a sense of freedom.

I may be happy that Manticore is gone; the stuff of my nightmares doesn't exist anymore; but like it or not, Manticore was my home.

Right now, I don't feel free.

Right now, I just feel lost.

I'm just a few steps behind you, 493.

It's my turn, 493. I'm leaving. Finally.

__

'I'm not 493 anymore. I'm Ben now.'

Yeah, I almost forgot.

I'm not 494 anymore. I'm Alec now.

***

Post-apocalyptic Seattle is a real picture in the morning.

Nothing but trash and tarmac for as far as the eye can see.

Not that you can see very far when it's raining, though.

I may be a genetically enhanced, perfect soldier, but I _do_ know what makes a perfect lie-in.

And when it's raining outside, while you're indoors, in bed…now _those_ are perfect conditions for a lie-in.

But then, there's work.

The world Outside doesn't think much of burglary as a source of stable income, and hey, the job came with a sector pass.

While getting out of bed, I noticed that I was already 10 minutes late. I spent quite some time in the shower; the water was cold, but I didn't mind; I have a tolerance for extreme temperatures, anyway.

After dressing, I looked out the window.

Still raining. And I was very late.

Hell, what did I care?

Watching a few raindrops meander down the other side of the glass, I shivered a little.

Was it just me, or was I feeling a bit nauseous?

__

'Call in sick,' the little voice known as "laziness" urged.

I picked up my cell phone.

Started dialling the number.

Then realised that something was wrong.

I couldn't seem to hold the phone steady.

Then it hit.

A sudden ripple of pain swept through me, knocking me to my knees, and the phone skittered away when I hit the floor.

My body shook uncontrollably.

Seizure.

A damn _seizure_.

I pulled myself along the floor towards my bed, where I'd left my jacket with a canister of Tryptophan in the pocket, the pain spreading to other parts of my body as I moved.

Just as I reached my bed, I came to a shocking realisation.

My supply of Tryptophan had been depleted a week ago, and I hadn't been able to locate the guy who'd managed to get me my last fix.

Which meant that I was out of Tryptophan.

My body started to shake even more violently. Maybe it was because of the fact that without the Tryptophan, the seizure was only getting worse; maybe it was because I was scared of what was going to happen to me without the Tryptophan.

I backed up against a wall and sat there, trying to control it, and failing pathetically. The more I tried to resist it, the worse it got.

After a while, my hands clenched and wouldn't unclench. My fingernails bit into and made deep crescent-shaped marks in the skin of my palm.

Then something dripped onto the back of my hand.

My nose had started to bleed.

My cell phone rang.

I reached over, trying to stretch far enough to reach it where it was lying near the end of my bed.

__

'Whoever you are, don't hang up…don't hang up, please….'

"H…hello?" I answered.

"Alec, you'd better be on your way to work," a familiar, irritated female voice said on the other side of the line.

"Max, look-"

"-'Cause we're already three men down, and the last thing we need is more overtime-"

"Max-"

"-and don't you give me a lame excuse for not coming-"

"_Max!!_"

She shut up then.

"Max…look, I…I need…Tryptophan…"

A pause.

"I'll be right over," I heard her say. "Just hang for a while, okay? Alec. _Alec_!"

"What?"

"I said hang in there!"

"I'm…trying."

***

"Alec!" I pounded on the door. "Open the door!" I pounded with my fists again, the canister of pills in my right hand rattling loudly as I did so.

Finally, I stepped back and shoved the door open.

I spotted him immediately, curled into a ball on his bed, and still convulsing.

"Alec?" I crossed the room quickly, and sat down beside him, shaking three pills into my hand at the same time. "Alec, it's Max, I'm here now…" I forced all three pills into his mouth and rubbed his throat to prompt the spontaneous swallow.

The pills went down, but the Tryptophan would need time to take effect.

I sighed, moved closer to him and cradled his head against me, hoping that it was giving some sense of comfort. Jondy used to do that…back at Manticore.

Alec could be a real pain at times; hell, most of the time, he had his head stuck so far up his ass that he could probably see out his mouth. But I guess we're all that we have. After all, we're both X5, even if we're not from the same group, and I have to admit, no one would understand an X5 better than another X5. Original Cindy tries, and my girl does come up to scratch, but there's no denying the fact.

I felt another series of violent tremors begin, and I looked down.

He looked just like Ben.

His dark lashes stood out against his pale skin, just like Ben's had when he was finally at peace. I gave his face a once-over. Ben's face was firmly imprinted in my mind, and I could tell that Alec's facial features mirrored his perfectly.

For a moment, I remembered the very first time that we'd met, back at Manticore.

I'd called him Ben.

He'd answered with "What?"

My heart had sunk.

Y'see, I'd thought that maybe Manticore had taken Ben, brought him back to life _somehow_, and then brainwashed him.

But right then, the "brainwashed" part hadn't mattered so much.

Ben was alive. That was all that had mattered at the time.

And for that brief moment, I was happy that Manticore existed. I was glad that this very place that was the bane of my life had been able to undo what I'd done.

Or so I'd thought.

Because in the very next instant, the bubble burst.

__

'My designation's 494.'

X5-494. Not X5-493.

He was Ben's _twin_. Not Ben.

When I caught a glimpse of his barcode, I'd almost cried.

Every single number was the same…except for the last one.

How could a difference of _one number_ make _so much_ difference?!

And later on, I wondered how both of them must've felt, being apart for so long.

Within my group of X5s, our ages were staggered; our birth dates spanned four years, with Zack as the oldest and I the youngest. We had been aware of the presence of a second group of X5s though; the X5s in that group were all born within the same year; they were all the same age. 

I guess Manticore was experimenting to see if we responded better to authority if it was older, as in Zack's case.

I knew that Ben had been in our group ever since he was three. After I found out about Alec's existence, I'd wondered about the paradox of the two of them. They'd been in the same womb for nine months, growing, developing and changing, together. And after they were born, they'd spent most of their lives far apart, rather than together.

There was movement beneath Alec's closed eyelids.

Somewhere in his mind, Alec was thinking.

Maybe some old memory from Manticore had taken advantage of his present weakness to rear its ugly head of reminder at him.

***

Everything just seemed to fade.

My sense of touch went numb; every sound that I heard got more and more distant; my vision blurred and went dark.

I was helpless. Vulnerable. Weak.

Well, helpless and vulnerable, maybe. But "weak"…that thought's somewhat Manticore-inspired.

At Manticore, any inability to defend yourself was seen as weakness.

Then slowly, my senses returned.

The first thing that I became aware of was a very faint, tinkling noise.

I recognised it immediately.

A piano. It was the sound of a piano playing.

Wherever I was, it was very dimly lit. I walked in the direction of the sound of the piano, and suddenly found my surroundings very familiar.

I was walking down a corridor. The corridor outside Andrews' apartment. The first corridor that I'd walked in that wasn't all grey. My first solo mission.

The panes of wood on either side were varying shades of brown, darkening as they went down. The floor was parquet, and the candle-shaped lights which I had thought were "small lights on white sticks" when I was younger, were mounted on the walls near the ceiling.

The piano continued to play. The corridor continued to stretch. Until I saw a door, right at the end.

And when the door came into view, I recognised the song that was playing.

My song.

The very first piece that I'd learned to play.

I'd learnt it at Manticore.

My fingers touched the doorknob, turned it, and pushed the door open.

The room inside was dark, except for one spot, where a piano stood. That spot was lit in very bright, white light.

I walked over and sat down on the bench. Lifted my hands, touched the keys and ran my fingers over them.

Could I still play?

I hadn't touched a piano in a long time…Manticore hadn't allowed me anywhere near one after the Berrisford mission had been completed.

I pressed down on one key, then another, two more, and then the other hand joined in.

The piano in the background carried on playing, and soon I was matching it note for note.

Could I still play… That was a dumb question. Of course I could. I never forgot anything.

Sometimes I wish I could.

I could honestly say that I'd probably loved only three things in my life. And every one of them was taken away from me.

The first I ever loved was my brother. 493. Even if I hadn't known that it was "love" back then.

Rachel was the third.

Before Rachel and after 493, the second was the piano.

Sounds cheesy, doesn't it?

But look, you have to understand.

When I was told that I was going to have to learn to play the piano to meet minimum mission requirements, I hadn't known what a piano was.

But when I learned to play it, I found it fascinating.

Everything at Manticore was standardised, monotonous, an endless charade of "you-say-I-obey".

The piano had been a very different story for me.

So many different sounds…and each individual sound could vary on its own too: pressing lightly gave a soft note; striking hard gave a sharp, loud note. It could sound happy, sad, angry, or anything at all, depending on how I played it…

The way I saw it then, the piano could talk, but not in the same mode of communication that we knew. Not through language, or through hand signals, but through emotion. The piano broadcast its player's emotions through the sound that it produced.

I knew that Manticore considered emotion a weakness; I knew that better than anyone in my group; I remembered the slap that I'd received when I was three that had started to drill that rule into my head.

But hey, I never _asked_ for emotion.

The predominant DNA in my blood is human; humans have emotion. Every living thing whose DNA I have, has emotion too. I don't think there's any way to separate emotion from any living thing that has free will.

I guess that's what Manticore tried to do. Take away our sense of free will, and do away with emotion at the same time.

They _tried_ to make us perfect.

But if their idea of "perfect" meant "devoid of emotion", then they failed.

It's not our fault if we show emotion.

We were designed_ with_ emotion; they just didn't realise it when they did it.

Emotion isn't _our_ fault. It isn't _our_ mistake.

I just sat there and played…I missed the piano. While I played, I was reminded of Manticore. I couldn't help it; after all, that was where I'd learned to play, and it was where I'd learned every piece that I could play. I forgot that I was in some hazy world in the middle of nowhere.

"Hi, 494."

My fingers skidded on their way to find the next key, and I stood and whirled around, a loud, abrupt chord cutting the song short as I pressed on the keys behind me to steady myself. On a different level of conscious thought, I noted that the piano sounded just as surprised or shocked as I felt.

I stared at the person behind me. And I stared at what had been a dark, black room.

The dark room that I'd walked into had turned into the nursery back at Manticore.

Stiff cots in two rows, chained to the floor.

Harsh white light that shone through barred windows, throwing grid patterns on the cold ground and the thin grey sheets in each cot.

"You," I choked out as I stared at the person who had called my designation.

"Yeah. I'm you."

"_No_. You are _not_ me, 493."

That's who he was.

He could tell me that he was some dreamlike persona of myself, but no.

I knew my twin brother when I saw him.


	4. My Own Path

Different And The Same

Chapter 4: My Own Path

"_No_. You are _not_ me, 493."

"Ben," he corrected."

"You'll always be 493 to me," I snapped. "Don't bother trying to change what I'm used to calling you." 

"You're an X5," he countered. "You're part of the most adaptable X-series ever created. So learn. Alec."

"What're you doing here?"

"Wanted to see you," he shrugged, stepping closer to me.

I took a step back, then remembered that the piano was still behind me. When I turned to look though, it was gone. The bench too.

"You _wanted_ to see me?" I asked. "_Right_. This coming from the person who decided to leave me in that hellhole when we were nine."

"I would've taken you with me if we'd had the time to get to your block!"

I glared at him.

"Bullshit, 493."

"Why won't you believe me?"

"You try it!! First you left me back there, then you died and left me even more alone than you already had, and then you got me into Psy Obs! Do you know that?! Half a year with those goddamned scientists! All you've ever done with your damned life is-"

"Leave you behind," he cut me off. "I know. I'm sorry."

I was breathing hard after that outburst. I sat down, drew up my knees and folded my arms across them.

493 sat down in front of me, crossing his legs beneath him.

"494?" I looked up when he said my designation again. "When did you learn to do that?"

"Play the piano?"

"No. You're crying."

Then I felt the cold streak on my left cheek. I brushed it away and stared at the wetness on my fingers.

__

'Crying is a sign of weakness! Emotion is weakness! Get to your feet, 494!'

"I didn't learn," I answered. That was true. The first time, it had just…happened. "The first time I remember doing it was-"

__

' "Where's 493?" I asked.

'He hit me.

'I started crying.'

"Was when I was three," I finished.

"Really? I missed you then too."

I looked at his face. He was leaning slightly forward, his elbows resting on the sides of his bent knees, and his hands dangling about an inch above the ground.

I don't know why I did it, but I suddenly wanted to touch him.

I needed to know that he was really here.

Maybe what I really wanted to know was that he wouldn't leave me again.

I reached out one hand. 493 watched me curiously, not understanding what I was trying to do. When it became clear that I was reaching in his direction though, he extended one hand to me.

Our hands met in the middle.

But they didn't touch.

My hand just went _through_ his.

And I felt…nothing.

"No…" I whispered. "No…"

This wasn't fair.

493 was sitting right in front of me, but we couldn't even touch. 

This. _Wasn't_. **_Fair!_**

"I can't touch you," I babbled, lowering my hand. "I can't-"

"Don't cry, 494."

"_I can't touch you!!_ Don't you _understand_?!"

" 'Course I do. I understand my little brother better than anyone else, after all."

I pressed the heels of my hands to my eyes.

"It's a bit symbolic, isn't it?" 493 suddenly said.

"What is?"

"The number 493 comes before 494…I was born first. I'm older than you. But the 'A' in Alec comes before the 'B' in Ben. Maybe 'cause you'll live to be older than me."

I looked up and blinked.

493 had always had a funny way of looking at things.

"Play a game with me, 494?" he asked in a whisper.

He lifted his hand, two fingers raised.

I stared at his hand. It was trembling very slightly. His eyes were shining.

Just like when we were two years old.

__

'Let's play a game, 494.'

"I remember this game," I said softly, still watching his two fingers.

" 'Course you do. We played it all the time in the nursery, remember?"

I remembered. I never forgot anything. 

I remembered the first time that we played the game.

__

'493 and I sat on his cot again, playing what he'd taught me two days ago. 493 was good at thinking of new things.

One of the ladies who taught us things came up to us.

"What're you doing?" she asked, smiling.

"Playing," we answered.

"What game is it?" she asked.

493 and I stopped playing.

"What's a game?" 493 asked.

"Well, it's what you were playing just now." '

"Two fingers. You're feeling two things," I stated.

He nodded, happy that I still knew how to play his game.

"You're happy."

One of his fingers curled out of sight.

One finger left. I still had to guess the other feeling.

I stared at him.

"Love?" I asked.

The other finger curled out of sight and he lowered his hand.

"That night, when you got back from Psy Obs, I heard your question, 494. I did love you. Still do."

I said nothing, and held up three fingers.

"Love. Happiness," he said confidently. I lowered two fingers.

He stared at my remaining one finger for a while.

"You're sad?" he asked.

I let my hand fall.

"Why?" he persisted, sounding confused.

"I can't touch you anymore. I can't call you and know that you'll answer. I can't see you-"

"Yes you can. We look exactly the same, 494. Have you tried a mirror? I'm in there somewhere."

" I mean _you_, 493! I don't want to look in a mirror and try to see _you_ in _me_; I want to see _you_! I've wanted to see you ever since they separated us. That's 16 years, 493. And now that I can see you, I can't touch you. It's just not fair." I held my head in my hands. "We've always been on different sides, right from the night when you and the others ran. We're almost like the same person…but we've always been on different sides of the fence."

"That's Manticore's fault," he snapped. "They separated us in the first place." He sighed. "I thought about it sometimes…maybe, if I'd taken you with us, taken you away with me, maybe I wouldn't have needed the Blue Lady."

"What Blue Lady?"

"She watched over us. Or she tried to, I think. My group of X5s believed that she'd protect us if we had enough faith in her. But now, I think the kind of protection that we were wanted was different from the protection that she had to offer. She could provide a sense of comfort, she could make you _feel_ protected, but we wanted _physical_ protection. We wanted someone who would stop the officers from hitting us; we wanted someone who would stop the officers from taking us away; we wanted someone who would keep us safe."

"So…why did you need her after you left, then?"

He looked down, away from my gaze.

"When we were in the world Outside, I found that I didn't have any…purpose." He smiled wryly. "Sadly, Manticore gave me a purpose when I was back there. At least I knew what I was. I knew that I was a soldier. But in the world Outside, nobody seemed to understand what Manticore had taught us. So I just clung on to the only identity that I knew I had."

"You were lost."

"Yeah." Another rueful smile. "Just like how you felt when you were watching Manticore burn. If I'd brought you out of Manticore with me, maybe I would've had someone to turn to when the world made no sense."

Silence.

"The Good Place," I said, and he looked up. "Are you there now?"

"I'm…not sure. But it's better than Manticore."

Did you…really believe everything that you said about the Good Place?"

He nodded slowly.

"I did. I believed that there was somewhere that we could be, where we'd be happy. It started on the night when Sen came back. She'd been away for three days, and we were all worried; Zack and Tinga especially. She was detained for disciplinary action," he explained. "That night, the officers just opened the door of our barracks and pushed her in. she sprawled out on the floor, and none of us dared to move from our beds until we could no longer hear the officers' boots out in the corridor. After that, all of us swarmed around her. She was a lot thinner than I remembered, and she had bruises all over her.

"Tinga held her, and Zack looked angry and…resigned at the same time. I guess he was mad that they beat her up, but he knew that she had it coming when she disobeyed orders. Sen slept in the bed next to mine…when we escaped back in '09, she was one of those that were killed. That night, when all of us got back into bed, she wanted me to sit with her until she fell asleep."

__

'What did they do to you, Sen?'

'Hurt. They put me in a very bad place. I could hear the Nomlies screaming, Ben. They were in that bad place too.'

'You shouldn't disobey orders.'

'I know. I'll be a good soldier now, Ben, I will.'

"We were quiet for a while. Then she asked the question that started it all."

__

'Ben? If bad soldiers go to that bad place, then do good soldiers go to a good place?'

'I don't know…but there should be. A good place…for the best soldiers.'

'Do they punish soldiers there?'

'No. The best soldiers never get punished. No one ever gets punished there.'

'Then no one yells at you?'

'No, Max. No one yells.'

'So no one disappears?'

'No one disappears, Jondy.'

"All of us were sitting up, helping to build a fantasy that we could hold on to; building a place that had everything that we wanted, but Manticore couldn't give. That's how the Good Place began," he finished.

"You all had names," I observed.

"Yeah. We gave them to each other."

I shifted a little and lay down on the floor. The cold, familiar floor of Manticore's nursery.

I remembered 493's and my quiet feet padding across this floor when we were three.

"49-…Ben, could you tell me about your Good Place?"

I caught his smile as he lay down next to me and put his hands behind his head.

"Sure. I've always wanted to tell you."

***

I woke up. From the look of the sky, it seemed like it was almost evening.

Alec was still asleep. Funny how a seizure makes a genetically enhanced human just as vulnerable as any normal human.

Ouch. I'd been sitting in the same position for too long. Had to stretch.

I shifted Alec's head to the pillow and stood up, arching my spine backwards and letting loose a yawn.

My mouth snapped shut in mid-yawn when I saw it.

There was a small card in Alec's hand.

One that I recognised far too well.

A picture of the Blue Lady.

For some reason, it scared me.

Psy Obs might have cleared Alec, but he hadn't known about the Blue Lady then…what if Alec became a repeat of Ben?

I removed the card from his hand and walked to the far end of the room.

Standing with my back towards him, I stared at the card.

I remembered the janitor who'd given Jack the card.

Jack had believed Ben…he'd believed that the Blue Lady had saved him.

We'd all believed that the Blue Lady would protect us.

And when the officers took Jack away…Ben had taken it the hardest.

I remembered the searchlights scanning past the window that I was looking out of.

I was waiting for Ben to come back with an answer. To tell us why the Blue Lady had let Jack be taken away. Ben always had answers.

I heard his angry shout from the rooftop.

__

"**Why?!** What did we do **wrong**?! We believe in you!!"

We believed…we did…we had.

After that, we gave up on her. The officers dismantled our altar to her, anyway.

We stopped believing in her, and took things into our own hands.

We escaped.

But now…maybe the rest of us had stopped believing, but Ben had still believed; we just hadn't known it.

We hadn't known…until it was too late.

We couldn't save Ben from himself.

"Max."

I turned and saw Alec standing a little way behind me.

"What're you doing out of bed?" I asked, frowning.

He smiled, and stepped to one side. And behind him, I saw…Alec. Still asleep.

"Look, I don't know how exactly to say this, but…I'm not Alec."

I stared.

What the hell…

"Ben?"

He smiled again.

All right, it had to be Ben. Alec never smiled. He always grinned or smirked, but never-…very seldom did he smile.

I felt the sharp edges of the card in my hand.

"_You_ gave Alec the picture of the Blue Lady?"

He nodded.

"Are you nuts? You want him to turn out like you?"

"I just wanted to give him something! Other than that picture, the only other things that I owned were weapons, Maxie; would you rather I gave him a gun?!"

To tell the truth, a gun sounded hell of a lot better to me.

"Why're you back here, anyway?" I asked.

He turned to look at Alec.

"I needed to say sorry," he said quietly, so softly that I almost didn't hear it.

"Sorry for what?" I asked as I stepped nearer to him.

"I had to say sorry…all I ever did was leave him behind."

I followed his gaze.

"Alec?"

Ben nodded again.

"When we escaped in '09, I left him at Manticore. I landed him in Psy Obs."

"Not your fault, Ben."

He smiled wryly and turned to me.

"Y'know, he's lucky to have you around, Maxie. At least he has someone to help him understand this world."

I shrugged.

"He's a big boy. He can take care of himself."

"Just don't take his smart-ass remarks to heart, 'kay? I mean, he's a smart-ass on purpose, Max. My little brother is a walking emotional time bomb. He thinks that he can push aside everything bad that's ever happened in his life and lock it up in some, deep, dark place where neither he nor anyone else ever has to see it. He thinks that he'll be fine that way. He won't. That deep, dark place can only hold so much, and when it bursts, he'll collapse. He'll implode. Just like I did."

Silence.

"Maybe you don't understand, but Alec's had a lot of people run out on him in his life. I left him when we were nine. Much later on, he got slapped with re-indoctrination; it had to do with one of his missions. Emotional entanglement with his primary contact. He was eighteen then. Then I got him into Psy Obs, and just before that, X5-621 called him inferior to his face. And the worst thing about 621 calling him that was because he and 621 had always been close. He and 621 were like you and Jondy."

I winced inwardly.

I guess that it would've cut really deep if Jondy called me something like that. If Alec had been pumped full of Manticore's brainwashing back then, then being called inferior would have been the ultimate insult.

"So, you're saying…" I began.

"I'm saying that he knows that his attitude pisses people off. And if it keeps people away from him, he's happy with that."

"No more emotional entanglements." I finally understood. " 'Cause if he doesn't get involved, he doesn't get hurt."

Ben nodded.

"We're all pretty screwed up," he said with another wry smile.

"Not our fault."

"Thanks, Maxie."

"For what?"

"Fr giving him what I couldn't. Thanks for getting him out of Manticore, for giving him a name, for giving him a real life."

I turned to him to answer, but he was gone.

***

"_That's_ why he needed her?!"

"I wouldn't say 'needed'," Max replied.

Later that evening, when I woke up, I realised that 493 hadn't really answered my question, as to why he needed his Blue Lady.

I figured that Max might know, so I asked.

And after she freaked for about twenty minutes, asking me how the hell I knew about the Blue Lady, she finally calmed down and told me.

And frankly, the answer freaked me out a little.

__

'He was…an anomaly. He was…unstable.'

"Lydecker told me that he was unstable," I said.

"Lydecker was also full of bullshit," Max snapped back. "Manticore did that to him."

"He was lost." I remembered what I'd said in the dream.

"I guess."

There was a short silence.

"So he was killing people," I summarised.

"Yeah. Final total was 11, across four different states."

"And I thought that _I_ was going nuts," I shook my head.

She was sitting next to me on the bed, one leg stretched out in front of her, and her other leg drawn up with her arm resting on the knee. She turned to look at me when I said that.

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"I used to have nightmares back at Manticore; started when I was about 16, I think. They'd always be about running. I could always hear someone running. And very seldom…there'd be a voice too. And whenever the voice did make an 'appearance' in the dream, it always said the same thing. 'Apprehend and terminate the target. I know what my mission is.' And most of the time, at the end of the nightmare, there'd be a snapping sound."

I noticed Max stiffen when I mentioned that.

"I'd wake up after the nightmare ended, and there would always be blood all over my hands or all over me. The first time it happened, I was covered in so much blood that I thought I was bleeding from somewhere. But everytime it happened though, once I blinked, all the blood would be gone. I never told anyone, of course. We may have been seriously brainwashed and blindly obedient, but we weren't stupid. To tell the officers that I was having dreams about waking up covered in blood would be suicide. I'd probably have got myself into Psy Obs earlier or locked up in the basement with the X2s."

Max was staring at me.

"What?" I asked.

"I think…somehow…Ben's emotions got through to you."

"Huh?"

"Well, when Ben was killing people, he'd snap their necks."

Oh. The snapping sound.

"Hang on; are you trying to tell that it was Ben that I was hearing in those nightmares?"

"Maybe."

A longer silence.

"Max? Tell me about Ben. What was he like?"

A sad smile graced her features.

"Ben…" she seemed to be enjoying the sound or the feel of his name on her lips. "I think he was the first of us to break out of the rigidity of Manticore's environment. He revolted against it, but…he did it quietly. He used to make shadows, in the shapes of all kinds of different animals, on the walls of our barracks to entertain us. His imagination went against everything that Manticore stood for, but his conscious mind kept it in check. His conscious mind reminded him that he was a soldier.

"But we all knew that Ben was different. Everything that Ben told us was beautiful, and strange, coloured with colours that we'd never seen before but could somehow imagine, and in some way, more real than the life that we led inside Manticore. All his animal shadows on the walls, his stories of the Good and Bad Places and the Nomlies…even the Blue Lady… I don't know how he did it, but while Manticore was drilling childhood out of us, Ben was there, telling his stories, making us laugh and smile… Keeping us in the regions of childhood that Manticore was trying to haul us out of. He was silently going against Manticore. "

"What happened to him, then?"

"I don't know. Maybe he really was lost. Maybe he just couldn't understand everything."

***

"Maybe he just couldn't understand everything," I said.

__

'We never should've left. Everything made sense there.'

Maybe Ben was right. Everything _was_ much simpler back at Manticore.

__

'Is that why you give her your victims' teeth? To make her heart stronger? To fight the Nomlies?'

'Shut up.'

I'd seen him swallow hard when I mentioned the Nomlies.

__

'You're the Nomlie.'

He'd swallowed hard. Again.

__

'No,' he'd choked out. As if he didn't want it to be true.

__

'The genetic mistake.'

'**No!**'

It was almost like…he knew. I think Ben knew that he was a Nomlie.

But he didn't want it to be true. Then I came along and said it to his face, justifying all his fears and his worst nightmare.

That broke him.

I glanced over to my left.

Alec was quiet, looking down at his hands in his lap, his thumbs tapping against each other.

It's funny…I never noticed it before now, but both twins are pretty extreme.

To start with, their personalities are at the far reaches off both sides of the scale; Ben was dark and intense, very serious, but Alec is the absolute opposite. He laughs everything off; it's like he blatantly refuses to take anything in life seriously. The disturbing thing though is, if you looked deeper, you'd see that whatever it is that Alec's laughing about, it isn't really funny.

It's more like he's mocking the nature of this broken world…mocking himself too.

Both twins also have a thing for walking on the edge.

Ben had done that, treading the fine line between sanity and insanity, but he'd lost his balance; he'd slipped off into the deep end. Part of Alec's attitude also specialised in testing the limits of people's patience; something along the lines of "if it doesn't piss someone off, where's the fun in it?"

But I guess a more obvious example of Alec's liking for risk-taking comes from his cage-fighting days. He'd used a pretty obvious alias back then.

He'd also probably known that it was dangerous, but he hadn't bothered, hadn't cared.

All he cared about was that he was getting a laugh out of it.

He was mocking Manticore.

Mocking those that created him.

Mocking his origins, mocking himself.

I guess Ben and Alec are alike in more ways than looks.

***

There was silence for a while.

I looked at my watch. We were a few hours into the evening.

"Hey," Max suddenly said, and I turned to look at her.

"I've gotta go now. Gotta get home, and explain to Cindy why I had to hightail it out of work today."

"Okay."

The bed rose a little as she stood up.

"Um…Max?"

She turned back.

"I…really appreciate what you did. I mean, for coming through for me."

"You mean, thank you."

"Yeah, uh…thanks."

I felt my cheeks flush.

I looked down at my hands again.

"Anytime."

I could almost feel the smile in her words as she said that.

I looked up. She _was_ smiling. Laughing at my awkwardness, I guess.

I smiled back as I got off the bed.

"Thanks anyway," I repeated as I hugged her.

"Alec, if you want your fingers to remain intact, you'll move your hands higher."

I just laughed and stepped away, hiding my hands behind my back.

"Don't you have to be going?" I grinned at her.

She rolled her eyes and walked towards the door.

"See you at work tomorrow," I heard her say as the door shut.

I brought my hands out from behind my back.

And stared at the white card that I'd removed from the back pocket of Max's jeans.

A picture of a lady in a blue dress.

__

'Is this your Blue Lady, 493?'

I recalled a snatch of the conversation that 493 and I had had in the dream.

__

"Is this your Blue Lady, 493?" I asked, staring at the card that I was holding.

"Yes." He sounded…almost proud.

"She's…very pretty."

"I know."

I walked back to my bed and tucked the card into my jacket pocket.

__

'She could provide a sense of comfort, she could make you feel protected…'

"But she can't give physical protection," I whispered, finishing the sentence.

In the dream, he had handed the card to me, saying, "Just something for you to remember me by."

"Don't follow in my footsteps. Don't do what I did," he also said.

I walked into the bathroom, and was met by my reflection staring back at me from the mirror.

'Have you tried a mirror? I'm in there somewhere.'

I tried a smile.

A proper smile.

Not a grin or a smirk, but a real smile.

I liked the image looking back at me.

"Hi Ben."

End


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